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Abstract:

This thesis provides a critical analysis of Pakistan's geopolitics. It examines why Pakistan
remains preoccupied with a state-centric view of conventional security, based on military
defense of territorial security/integrity against external threats. It questions why the ruling
elite of Pakistan perceive and interpret this geopolitical order as a given, unproblematic
and therefore natural condition. Drawing on critical insights — in particular, critical
perspectives on geopolitics and ideology — the research explores how the ruling elite,
during successive regimes in Pakistan, have employed a confluence of ideological and
strategic 'imperatives' to rationalize and naturalize the state-centric view of conventional
geopolitics. In this regard, the thesis makes a significant contribution to the existing body
of literature on power-elites, the 'construction' of security threats, and the ideological
character of Pakistan's geopolitics.
In examining the ideological and strategic orientation of the ruling-elite of Pakistan, this
thesis explores four major and self-contradictory ideological projects in Pakistan: Islamic-
Democracy of the 1950s, Islamic-Socialism of the 1970s, Islamisation of the 1980s, and
Enlightened-Moderation of the 2000s. In so doing, it considers if the ruling elite
constructed ideological rhetoric into the strategic environment of Pakistan in order to
conflate it with the changing contours of international and regional geopolitics.
The thesis argues that this enabled elite to rationalise and justify the state-centric view of
conventional geopolitics in the service of a number of interests. In particular, elite used
this geopolitical order to draw legitimacy, economic, diplomatic and military support and
to claim an exclusive and dominant role in the realms of domestic and strategic decision
making. The research mainly relies on qualitative methods that include interviews and
text-analysis of both primary and secondary sources.